Free Digital Fiction from Penguin

Pen­guin is pre­sent­ing six sto­ries, by six authors, over six weeks, in a series called We Tell Sto­ries. And they’re using the web to tell these sto­ries in orig­i­nal ways. One sto­ry, The 21 Steps, gets told over Google Maps — an approach that scores points for cre­ativ­i­ty, but also tires a lit­tle quick­ly. You can access all six sto­ries here. Also check out our exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio­books here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Learn Moviemaking From a Master (Courtesy of Apple)

The folks at Apple have rolled out an intrigu­ing new pod­cast that takes you inside the world of moviemak­ing. The Set to Screen Series (get it on iTunes here) fol­lows Baz Luhrmann, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed direc­tor (Moulin Rouge! and William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet) as he works on a new film. And every three weeks, from now through Octo­ber, a new video pod­cast will be released that shows you how films get made. On-set still pho­tog­ra­phy, cos­tume design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, scor­ing — it all gets cov­ered here. And yes, of course, this pod­cast is all in video. You can get more info on this project here.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven Read by 18 YouTubers (or Christopher Walken)

Can you bear it? If not, here’s a ver­sion by Christo­pher Walken.

(This video has not been added to our YouTube playlist.)

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The Automated Publishing House

The New York Times has a great arti­cle on a pro­fes­sor of man­age­ment sci­ence who has found­ed an almost com­plete­ly auto­mat­ed pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. The 200,000 books he’s pub­lished sound, well, ter­ri­ble, and ter­ri­bly over­priced: “Among the books pub­lished under his name are ‘The Offi­cial Patient’s Source­book on Acne Rosacea’ ($24.95 and 168 pages long); ‘Stick­ler Syn­drome: A Bib­li­og­ra­phy and Dic­tio­nary for Physi­cians, Patients and Genome Researchers’ ($28.95 for 126 pages); and ‘The 2007–2012 Out­look for Tuft­ed Wash­able Scat­ter Rugs, Bath­mats and Sets That Mea­sure 6‑Feet by 9‑Feet or Small­er in India’ ($495 for 144 pages).”

But Philip M. Park­er, the man behind them, is noth­ing if not ambi­tious. He’s also pro­gram­ming his machines to gen­er­ate lan­guage-learn­ing cross­words (i.e. clues in one lan­guage, answers in anoth­er), acros­tic poet­ry, and even scripts for game shows and videogames. All of this reminds me of a nov­el by Neal Stephen­son, The Dia­mond Age. In it, engi­neers of the future design a sort of arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent primer for young girls–the book gen­er­ates sto­ries and lessons on the fly. Maybe Park­er’s read this one before.

MIT’s (Free) Introduction to Physics

Wel­come to MIT. Here’s your intro­duc­tion to Physics.

Today, we present Physics I: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics, a fresh­man course taught by Wal­ter Lewin, the pop­u­lar physics pro­fes­sor who was recent­ly writ­ten up in The New York Times. The course cov­ers the foun­da­tions of mod­ern physics, which takes you from Isaac New­ton’s ground­break­ing work to super­novas, and which cov­ers such oth­er top­ics as Flu­id Mechan­ics, Kinet­ic Gas The­o­ry, Bina­ry Stars, Neu­tron Stars, Black Holes, Res­o­nance Phe­nom­e­na, Musi­cal Instru­ments, and Stel­lar Col­lapse.

You can down­load the course lec­tures in video via iTunes or in var­i­ous for­mats here. (The course is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties, which now con­tains over 200 free cours­es.) For more lec­ture series by Wal­ter Lewin, look here (Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism) and here (Vibra­tions and Waves).

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The Perfect Library

Get the “ulti­mate read­ing list,” accord­ing to the Tele­graph. The book­list (access here) ranges from “clas­sics and sci-fi to poet­ry, biogra­phies and books that changed the world.” And while you’re at it, check out this list of life-chang­ing books cre­at­ed by our very own read­ers.

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New York Public Library Now Live on iTunes

nyplyitunes1.jpgThe New York Pub­lic Library does­n’t need any intro­duc­tion. But it’s new page on iTunes per­haps does. It went live yes­ter­day (access it here), and it gives you access (all of it free, of course) to many great cul­tur­al pro­duc­tions staged by NYC’s fore­most library. You’ll find an exten­sive col­lec­tion of “con­ver­sa­tions” with some of today’s lead­ing authors — John Updike (tran­script), Umber­to Eco (video), Paul Auster (video), to name a few. (You can get the full author list here.) You’ll also get to rum­mage around in the library’s large Jazz Oral His­to­ry Project, which fea­tures inter­views with an impres­sive num­ber of impor­tant jazz fig­ures. And then last­ly — and for bet­ter or for worse — you can lis­ten to what is cur­rent­ly the library’s most heav­i­ly down­loaded pod­cast — Christo­pher Hitchen’s now well known debate with Al Sharp­ton.

As a last aside, it’s worth men­tion­ing that you don’t need an iPod to access many of NYPL’s offer­ings. You can find many of the same mate­ri­als on the library’s web site. (See here.) And, for more cul­tur­al pod­casts, please be sure to check out our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. You’ll find a lot of good con­tent along the same lines as what the NYPL has to offer.

via TUAW.com

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The New York Literary Canon

As a New York­er liv­ing rather per­ma­nent­ly in sun­ny Cal­i­for­nia, I feel some­what oblig­ed to men­tion this: New York Mag­a­zine has pulled togeth­er a list of “26 works of lap­idary New York­i­tude” — that is, high­ly lit­er­ary books that obsess over the great city. On the list, you’ll find works by Nor­man Mail­er, Bernard Mala­mud, Don Delil­lo, Woody Allen, and beyond. You can snag the full list here.

via Kottke.org

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.